


Narrow Openings

by bravebeetle (signalbeam)



Category: Lost
Genre: Angst, It's modern art, M/M, Museums, Pre-Canon, Tourism!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-18
Updated: 2010-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-25 02:48:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signalbeam/pseuds/bravebeetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is better that we outlive our dogs than our dogs outlive us.</p><p>Pre-series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Narrow Openings

Richard looked into the painting, and found it to be an embarrassment of first proportion, uglier than anything had a right to be and still call itself ‘art’. He did not feel ashamed or angry; just a little silly and a little old. This event was something worth smiling about, and worth carrying around with him. He could take it out of his breast pocket and show it to someone later to make conversation. _Ah_ , they would say. _Yes, it does look silly, doesn’t it..._ He looked at the painting again, and wondered if he was supposed to be moved by it: the strong, angular lines, the naked colors, the ugly perspective. He looked at the title. It was a domestic scene. A family dinner of some sort or kind. He didn’t know if he liked it. Family could be ugly, but he liked his families, the ones he had in the past and more grudgingly the ones he had now. Never mind. It was not worth thinking about.

The museum was a box, high and airy, with severe lines and walls painted a soft, elusive beige. It was a faint color of little importance and little note. He did not care for it. He did not care for the things on the walls, either.

The tiled floor clicked against the sole of his shoes. He felt like a rich man. He _was_ a rich man, wealthy to the point of being almost ashamed of it. Having money didn’t make him feel good. He could have any of the paintings in this room. He could have the building and change it into something else, but it didn’t mean a thing to him. The museum with its funny pictures, the building, the anything or everything--it could have just as easily been grass or dirt. He did not wish for someone to pass his wealth onto. It wasn't out of selfishness or despair. It was nothing so sad or so simple. Time came and when it left him, there was no place for him except a role to fill. He had stopped mattering to the world. He could do as he pleased: kill and rescue, restore and destroy. No consequence would come of it, no matter whether he was in hell or on earth. His wealth meant little. He had a job to do, and his money was a means to complete his work. And anyway, he had other things to be happy about. He nurtured leaders the way most people trained dogs. He took them in and raised them and outlived them. He heard a woman tell this to a boy crying over his dog once: It was too bad that humans outlived their pets. “But think of it this way,” the mother said. “It is better that we outlive our dogs than our dogs outlive us...”

Dogs needed to be ordered. And a dog without an owner had no protection, could be tossed about and shot without consequence. Richard moved onto the next picture and stood before it without looking. More shapes and more ugliness. The objects receded away from him irregularly. Things did not look big enough. The entire painting cramped up on itself. The times must truly be dire. People had run out of beautiful things to paint. There was nothing beautiful to look at.

The sunlight was warm on his cheek. The wool of his suit itched his neck. He needed to find Jacob. He turned in a circle. Jacob must be downstairs. He descended into the lower gallery. Here they displayed photographs and prints. Some were as large as murals, wide as a wall and nearly as tall. A woman floated in suspension in a ring of blue. Opposite of the woman was a photograph of a hallway. He marveled at the things people photographed now. When film had first been invented, people took pictures of other people because that was what they wanted to remember--or was it because people wanted to be photographed, and so demanded their immortality? People had always been vain, arrogant; spitting in the face of... god, perhaps, or time or fate. He thought it to be sad to believe in any god or in any plans. If he were to tug at a thread of fate, he’d learn that the thread led to nowhere. There were plans, but plans were so fragile, so easily broken and changed. He looked into another photograph: summer in Spain, lawn chairs lined up, a pool with rippling, dark waters, reflecting nothing. Richard looked into the picture, and felt nothing. He looked around the room again and saw nothing. He exited to the next gallery.

Giant pictures loomed on the walls. This was the home to structures and paintings and other big things. The floor reflected the lights fixed onto the ceiling. Everything was so big. He half-expected to see Jacob sitting atop a chair hanging from the ceiling. Jacob was not here either, or else he was somewhere near a wall and vanished whenever Richard came too close. Richard wandered again. There were more paintings. Where one floor had favored ugliness in exaggeration, another saw ugliness in perfect replication; or beauty or something else that was not worth mentioning.

He looked away, disgusted. He understood none of this art. Art had no business looking like this. He was too old to understand this. Or, he understood that this was not his time. He would have died just as things began to look ugly. And now that he was alive, everything was so ugly. Coming here had been a mistake. He should have left. He should have left when Jacob said that he did not know what he wanted to see, so the modern world might be nice. So much had changed since Jacob’s day. Richard thought that there might not be a point to leaving the island for leisure. What was he to do? His childhood had been on the island. The outside world had never even existed in Jacob’s mind until he was an adult. Richard was not an adventurous man, and he knew that Jacob was not, either. How much of this new world had Jacob seen? Little or none at all--or maybe he only toured places like these, shrines to the past that had long ago left.

He looked about the exhibition again. The paintings and things around him would one day disappear. He frowned. It was not art, so he should not care, and objects did not go to hell--not unless, he amended, they were particularly wicked. He wished he had gone to a church instead. That way he could have said that at least he had returned at least once. It was too bad. He rubbed his arms. The room was cold. He wanted to go back. He wanted to find Jacob, who had so suddenly vanished from his life. He found it all so intolerable, so bad, so pathetic. Jacob shouldn’t have left him alone like this. It wasn’t right. The ceiling seemed so big now, so cavernous and meant to cover men much bigger than him, men who liked the cold and men who were afraid of nothing. He hadn’t seen Jacob in the other rooms. Jacob must not be here at all. Jacob had left him. Richard felt sad, so sad; then it resolved inside him and he became angry that he had wasted so much time looking. He would leave the museum and go for a smoke. He wasn’t a smoking man. And he was sure that smoking was not in fashion anymore. But he wanted a smoke.

He left the museum and stood outside it. He had no cigarettes and no lighters. He wished he was home, but didn’t know if he meant on his island or his other island. He looked to the side and saw Jacob through the glass of the door, his arm full of bags and posters. Richard didn’t go to help him. Jacob eased the door open and went to Richard. He handed Richard one of the bags. It was full of heavy books. Jacob said, “I picked up some souvenirs.”

“I know you did,” Richard said. “They’re heavy. Are we going?”

“What do you think, Richard?” Jacob said. His expression was just as indecipherable as his words. It felt as though there was another conversation that Richard needed to hear. But getting Jacob’s orders was not the same as getting answers. One was easy. One was easy because there were rules to be followed, pieces to be moved, people to be ordered; and the other was incomprehensible, impossible, inappropriate. Jacob shifted the posters so that they were in less danger of tumbling out of his arms. Then he said, “We’ll go. Where is the car?”

“I don’t remember,” Richard said, more angry than he expected. “Why don’t you know it?” Jacob said nothing. And then he walked away. Richard called after him, “Where are you going?”

“To the car,” Jacob answered. His shadow looked like a devil on the ground. “Are you coming?”

“Where is it?” Richard said.

“We’ll find it,” Jacob said. “Let’s go, Richard. We must go soon.”

Richard did not hesitate. He followed Jacob and wondered why they were hurrying so. He walked just behind Jacob, and could not understand why. When he tried to understand it, he remembered the woman saying, _But think of it this way..._ It made no sense. He was not a dog. And he would never die. And so the woman had to be wrong. He looked at the back of Jacob’s head, and felt reassured. Yes, she had to be wrong. She was wrong without question. Richard followed Jacob back to the car. He let Jacob drive. When he asked, “Where are we going?” Jacob said, “Home,” and they both knew where that was. And so they left Boston and its strange museums. They went on an airplane to the west, and all night, all night long, Richard thought he could hear the sound of dogs baying at the moon.


End file.
